A Rancher of Her Own. Barbara Daille White

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СКАЧАТЬ a knee-jerk reaction every time he’d opened his mouth. That made her snap to attention...

      Of course.

      Years ago, she had seen how much he acted like her father, an Army general. Yesterday, Pete’s take-charge attitude at their first meeting in years had strongly reinforced those memories, proving he hadn’t changed a bit. But she would do her job—even if that meant working with the insufferable man.

      “Don’t forget, Jane—”

      Startled, she returned her attention to Tina.

      “—we’ve got to go up to Santa Fe to pick up our gowns. We might as well wait till Andi gets here, and then we can have our final fittings together.”

      Jane laughed. “In that case, I’d better stay away from Paz’s apple tarts, or I won’t get the zipper closed on my dress.” She pushed the dessert platter a few inches away from her.

      “Ally and I are the ones who should worry about that,” Tina said, referring to her best friend and maid of honor. “You and Andi are so slim.”

      “You don’t need to worry a bit,” Cole said to his bride.

      They smiled at each other as Cole casually draped his arm across Tina’s shoulders.

       A beautiful pre-wedding portrait.

       But you’re not on the job right this minute.

      Despite the fierce reminder, she wished she hadn’t left her camera on the far side of the dining room.

      As if she’d heard the thought, Tina said, “I’m glad you’ll be taking pictures at the rehearsal dinner. But the day of the wedding, you won’t forget you’re a member of the bridal party, will you?”

      “Yeah,” Cole said. “We’ve got a photographer lined up, so you’ll have the day off.”

      “I don’t know,” she said, only half joking. “Sometimes it feels like those cameras are extensions of my hands. I don’t go anywhere without them.”

      “Speaking of going somewhere...” He kissed Tina and rose from his seat. “I’d better hit the road, or I won’t be back before lunch with the supply order.”

      “Say hi to Ally when you see her,” Tina said. Her maid of honor worked at the hardware store in town.

      Once Cole had left, Tina turned back to Jane. “Maybe we need to take those cameras away from you, so you’ll behave yourself at the wedding,” she teased.

      “We can put them in my toy box,” said Robbie.

      Jane smiled at her cousin’s four-year-old. “Your toy box?”

      He nodded. “In my bedroom. Mama takes my toys away and puts them in the toy box.”

      “Oh, I see,” she said, searching for something to add. Her work might require she spend her life around people, including children, but she reserved in-depth interviews only for adults. Either way, she didn’t encourage her subjects to interact with her. She wanted to capture them in natural poses and real-life situations. Often all too real.

      “Mama takes the toys when I don’t listen,” Robbie explained.

      “Oh. Maybe I should not listen, once in a while, too, and then I won’t work so much.”

       As if.

      She looked up to find her grandfather eyeing her from the head of the long table. Suddenly, she realized some of her uncertainty came from her current “assignment.”

      “You and Pete going to get started this morning?” he asked.

      “We are,” she confirmed. “But not for a little while. I’m not rushing through Paz’s great breakfast.”

      After the photo shoots she had just completed, with three European trips in the space of a month, she shouldn’t plan to rush through anything this week. She deserved a break. Just not one that involved sitting still.

      She loved her grandfather and felt more than happy to help with the hotel revamp. Taking a few photos here and setting up the ranch’s new website would be a piece of cake compared to the Sarajevo shoot and other assignments she’d worked on.

      She didn’t mind spending a few extra days at the ranch, either, to get some of Grandpa’s photos out of the way—even if the job came with the drawback of having Pete around.

      He’d been right yesterday about the way she had acted years ago, about being a pain whenever she went near him.

      Long before that summer, she’d already seen how girls’ hormones made them do silly, stupid things around boys, and she had determined never to be like those girls. As an Army brat who had attended a succession of schools overseas by the time she hit her teens, she hadn’t ever met a boy she’d waste her time crushing on, let alone want to go out with.

      Not, of course, that General Garland would ever have allowed his daughter to date at that age.

      But the year she turned thirteen, on her summer vacation to Garland Ranch, she had run into Pete Brannigan outside the barn. Instantly, she understood why girls did silly, stupid things around boys. Besides, at twenty, Pete wasn’t a boy but a man.

      Unfortunately, only two minutes afterward she discovered he was a younger version of her father. Hormones or no hormones, that was the end of her interest.

      It was her thirteenth year all over again yesterday, when her first glance at Pete had given her equally silly though much more grown-up thoughts. Yet their run-in and his crack about being her “nursemaid” proved he had only gotten worse over time. If he thought she would sit back and let him boss her around—the way he’d always done whenever she had come near the barn or corral with Andi—he was in for a big surprise.

      * * *

      TO PETE’S SURPRISE, after he and Jane met in the hotel lobby, they settled into a routine with her doing the directing and him doing the grunt work. Nothing very strenuous, as they’d started in the sitting room just off the lobby.

      His job consisted of shifting tables, couches and chairs and putting them back into place. It involved very little talking and a whole lot of looking, which suited him fine.

      “Midmorning will be a good time for us to get the common areas done,” Jane had said yesterday. “The guests will either be sightseeing or taking riding lessons out at the corral.”

      Exactly where he should have been, overseeing those lessons. Instead, he’d notified all the hands they could reach him on his cell phone if necessary.

      The morning had passed much more quickly and with much less bickering than he had anticipated—probably because once Jane got behind the camera, she stayed there.

      He stood leaning against the door frame, watching as she worked her way silently around the area.

      “I don’t see much of a difference,” he said finally. “And the room always looks comfortable enough to me.”

      “It’s СКАЧАТЬ